Nuclear: what the commissioning of the Flamanville EPR will change

12 years late, the entry into service of the Flamanville EPR reactor constitutes a new step in the relaunch of nuclear power desired by Emmanuel Macron in 2022. After the green light given Tuesday by the Nuclear Safety Authority (ASN), “ EDF teams began loading the fuel assemblies into the reactor vessel on May 8, 2024 at 2 p.m., kicking off start-up and test operations before an effective connection to the electricity network planned for summer.

The loading of the 241 uranium assemblies “will last several days,” said EDF. At the end of a laborious 17-year project, punctuated by multiple problems and colossal additional costs, the Flamanville EPR, a 1,600 MW reactor, will be the most powerful in the French nuclear fleet, which will now number 57.

Connection to the electricity network (“coupling”) will only take place in several months, once the reactor has reached 25% of its power. It is only at the “end of the year” that the reactor should deliver its electrons at 100% of its power, according to EDF.

Furthermore, ASN has already prescribed the replacement of the vessel cover, which will take place during the first shutdown for reloading of the reactor. This worries the historical opponents of the EPR, who believe that starting it at all costs is a mistake. “This hasty commissioning can be explained by the government’s desire to demonstrate that its French EPR can work and that EDF has completed this catastrophic project,” summarizes the Sortir du nuclear network.

For Emmanuel Macron, who could make a trip to Flamanville in mid-May, this step is important to move on, to strengthen France’s nuclear ambition and international position.

In February 2022, the President launched the new reactor construction program which aimed, alongside renewable energies, to guarantee France’s electricity supply and contribute to achieving carbon neutrality. “We need to pick up the thread of the great adventure of civil nuclear power in France,” Emmanuel Macron explained in Belfort, who wanted to make nuclear power his hobby horse for a second five-year term.

He had announced in particular the extension beyond fifty years of the lifespan of “all reactors that can be extended”, the construction of six EPR 2 on existing sites, in pairs, at Penly (Seine-Maritime) , then in Gravelines (North) and finally in Bugey (Ain) or Tricastin (Drôme), and the small modular reactor (SMR) project.

At the end of December 2023, the government unveiled the first version of the bill on energy sovereignty, criticized for not being quantified on renewables and which announced the launch of the construction sites of six new EPRs by 2026, but also the construction 13 gigawatts of additional capacity (the equivalent of eight EPRs) beyond this deadline.

Macron’s announcements this summer on 8 additional EPRs

These eight EPRs were confirmed by Emmanuel Macron during his press conference on January 16. “In the summer, I will announce the main axes for the next eight (EPR). We have a strategy, an organization: we need efficiency, results and now territorialize it, that is to say, work with our elected officials.”

And Emmanuel Macron wants to move quickly. While the 2019 Energy Climate law provided that the multi-year energy programming (PPE) would be the subject of a legislative text, the government, after several months of vagueness, decided not to present its bill to Parliament. , preferring to go through a decree which should be published by the end of the year. To the great dismay of environmentalists who speak of “betrayal” and illegality. “Without an energy law, the government is outlawing the law,” said the Climate Action Network.

Refusing an overly complex “cathedral law” – only a text on consumer protection in the energy sector will be examined by parliamentarians – Energy Minister Roland Lescure assumes he wants to move forward quickly on nuclear as well as renewable energy. “We are building the energy infrastructure for the next fifty years,” explained the minister to Le Figaro on April 12, who nevertheless indicates that a consultation will be launched until the fall and who displays his desire to “put an end to the war of religion which pits the pro-nuclear against the pro-renewable. »